


Man of Clay and Ash

by MizzAdamz



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood Drinking, Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M, Gothic, Guilt, Tragedy, Vampire Hermione Granger, Vampires, spooktober 2020 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:34:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizzAdamz/pseuds/MizzAdamz
Summary: “Break me then! Destroy me! I am ash already; grind me under the pestle of your judgement and remove my sharp edges.”
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 13
Kudos: 43
Collections: Hearts and Cauldrons Discord Members, SSHG Spooktober Fest 2020





	Man of Clay and Ash

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Hearts & Cauldron's Spooktober Fest 2020.
> 
> This piece is heavily inspired by "Hate Me" performed by Eurielle.
> 
> Beta'd by wonderful NaomiJameston. (Thank you Mom.)

It was a familiar hilltop they stood on.

It was as cold as the last time he stood here.

Cold and barren as it was almost 30 years ago.

The old man wasn’t here though.

The old man who was his latent saviour and gaoler.

In his place, she stood.

She who was his world.

She who was his death.

She who was Death.

She stood in a white shift, its hem whipping around her ankles in the bitter wind.

He reached out to her, and she stepped back.

“Please.” He gasped, the air in his lungs burning.

She tilted her head and said nothing, looking at him with cold eyes.

“Please, help me.”

“Maybe,” Her voice was quiet, but he heard it over the wind on that barren hill top.

“Save me, please.” He begged, his hand was still outstretched, reaching for her.

“Why?”

He dropped his hand and bowed his head.

“Why?” she repeated, her voice as cold as the hilltop.

“I’ve hurt you; I’ve hurt us both.”

“Why should I save you?”

“Break me then! Destroy me! I am ash already; grind me under the pestle of your judgement and remove my sharp edges.”

“You want my forgiveness?”

“No! I want you.”

“I belong to no living being, Severus.”

“I’m not asking you for that.”

She shook her head and turned away. She walked down the hill.

“Hermione! Stop! Please.” He fell to his knees, limbs mashing against the rocks that once before tasted his grief.

He bowed his shoulders and hung his head. It was over; she had left him.

He closed his eyes and sobbed.

She would never forgive him.

He had failed again.

He was more a monster than anyone feared.

Now he was a monster alone.

Again.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a set of bare toes on the ground before him.

He looked up. With shining eyes, he saw the white shift, the still form of his beloved.

Her face was blank. 

Her wild hair shivered in the wind. 

Her shift brushed against him.

They were the only indications that she wasn’t a statue of stone.

“Please, please save me,” he begged. “Push me, break me, leave me open and sore, then please save me.”

“What you ask isn’t easy.”

“It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

“You’d give up that quickly?”

“I’m fighting, not giving up. I’m changing the battlefield.” His hair was caught in the wind and blew in front of his eyes. 

He shook his head, his sight of her had to be unfiltered.

“Am I to remake you, oh thing of clay, into my image?”

“Make me feel as you do. Punish me for my sins by showing me how they feel.”

“Will this not make your sins mine?”

“It will mete out a justice long overdue.”

She stepped back again, and as he reached out to her, she spoke. “Stand.”

He obeyed her; he would obey her in all things now.

She was his everything.

“You’d have me be your judge, jury, and executioner then?”

“As you are the one I love the most, it’s your right. As you are the one I wronged the most, you have that privilege.”

“This isn’t the simple path you think it is.”

“I expect it to hurt. I need it to hurt.”

“Self-flagellation doesn’t suit you Severus.”

“It is more natural to me than you know, my angel.”

“I do not have wings.”

“What would you have me call you? You are my guardian and my judgment.”

“If I do this Severus, it will be over.”

“No! It can’t. I am doing this so it won’t be over.”

“It can never be the same. The world will change. You will not be whole.”

“I will be with she who makes me whole. The rest of the world be damned.”

“You sentenced me to this fate a decade ago; you ran scared of what I became. Now you wish to embrace it?”

“I am a coward, selfish and foolish. Destroy me and take your revenge. Just let me be near you to be your whipping boy. Remind me hourly of how I failed you.”

“You welcome pain?”

“It will be a paradise when compared to being without you.”

She looked at him, looked through him. Her stillness was unnerving and ethereal.

“I damned myself that day, Hermione. I damned myself two decades before when I bowed to another. If I am entitled to anything, which I know I am not, I would spend the remaining years of my earthly existence serving you penance before I give my penance to whatever gods demand it of me.”

“You would belong to me fully?”

“I already do. I have for over a decade.”

“Man of clay, child of ash, you ask me to pour blood into my hands and use it to bathe you?”

“Baptise me in my sin, my mistress. I beg you.”

“To stay by my side?”

“As long as you’ll have me, and beyond.”

“Your will is to be mine then?”

“It already is.”

She lifted her arms and crossed them under her bust, holding herself and instantly reminding him of the girl she once was.

His heart ached.

“I’ve not been able to let you go,” she admitted softly.

“Please don’t ever.”

She lowered her arms and resumed her effigy like stance.

He swallowed, his limbs shaking in the cold and in the fear.

He wanted the pain she could grant him.

He wanted it more than he wanted air in his lungs.

He craved the pain, but he feared it.

It was his due; he knew it.

But a mortal’s fear of pain is a native thing.

He wasn’t entitled to his fear, but biology didn’t care for the rules.

He blinked.

Then she struck.

Faster than lightning, smoother than syrup, she moved.

His body was in her arms and his head thrown back at an unnatural angle.

His muscles protested, his bones shuddered.

Light flooded his vision as his nerves tried to warn him of the danger.

“Thank you, my love. Thank you.” He gasped as the world darkened at the edges.

She held him close, her mouth over his scarred neck, swallowing deeply.

Her limbs were stronger than her frame would suggest, holding him securly as he lost control of his body.

His vision darkened, and he welcomed it. Soon his torment would begin.

Unless she wished to betray him, as he deserved, and leave him here.

His waning strength struggled to his throat.

She had made no promises.

She could just leave him alone on this hill.

Leave him to the gods and the elements.

He was too weak to beg again.

She pulled her face away from his neck and looked at him.

Her lips swollen like she had just left her lover’s bed.

His dark eyes begged her to complete it.

He was selfish enough to not accept her judgement if it meant he was to die here.

He owed her too much suffering to die so easily.

“Oh hush Severus, I have decided. Let go. It is my will.” She whispered.

He couldn’t close his eyes, he could only watch as she faded into darkness.

His soul ached; he didn’t deserve this quick absolution.

Then he felt nothing.

  


* * *

“You are mine now, man of clay and ash. Blood poured from my hand has shaped you.”

Words echoed in his brain.

Dry, papery words that held no warmth.

“Open your eyes, fool who would be my lover. Open them and look at your mistress.”

Severus opened his eyes and was blinded by how bright the midnight world was.

He blinked a few times and saw his mistress in her white shift.

Blood was on her chin. His life’s blood.

He ached, a consuming hunger clouded his mind.

“Stop!” she commanded.

He instantly froze, unaware of how it was that he was by her side, only that the blood called him.

“You will not feed. Not for 48 hours.”

Her command settled on him like a chain.

He accepted it. 

Her will was everything.

Even if the hunger pulled him.

“You choose this Severus.”

“I did.”

“Do you regret it, now that you know the hunger?”

“I regret only that it took me so long to accept your justice.”

“Come then, penitent. Walk by my side.”

“Always.”


End file.
